FM Cohen rejects his own ministry’s report about ramifications of judicial overhaul

Foreign Minister Eli Cohen rejects the findings of an internal report from his office that warned of the damaging ramifications of the government’s judicial overhaul effort to Israel’s international standing.

A handful of very senior officials in the Foreign Ministry commissioned the report on the ramifications of the overhaul on Israel’s foreign relations, while agreeing to keep the circle of those who knew about its compilation at a minimum due to the sensitivity of the issue, the Walla news site reports.

While written in very cautious language, the report found that Israel’s international standing has been slowly deteriorating since the establishment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hardline government on December 29, particularly because of the judicial overhaul it unveiled days after being sworn in.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman says today that Cohen “does not accept the assessment presented in the report. It does not express the position of all ministry officials and does not reflect a true picture of the situation. The report reflects the author’s opinion alone.”